Raquel Chang-Rodríguez is distinguished professor of Hispanic literature and culture at the Graduate Center and the City College of the City University of New York (CUNY), where she codirects the Cátedra Mario Vargas Llosa. She is co-editor with Carlos Riobó of Talking Books with Mario Vargas Llosa: A Retrospective (Nebraska, 2020), a combination of literary analyses and anecdotal contributions that reveal the little-known human and intellectual dimensions of Vargas Llosa the writer and Vargas Llosa the man.

On April 13, 2025, celebrated Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa passed away. In this guest post, Raquel Chang-Rodríguez takes us back to 2010—the year the author won a long overdue Nobel Prize in Literature “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat.”

Mario Vargas Llosa: The Nobel Prize and the Doctorate Honoris Causa at The City College of New York

Very early in the morning of October 7, 2010, Mario Vargas Llosa (1936–2025) received a call from the secretary of the Swedish Academy who shared the following news: he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Very early in the morning—and this is always scary—the phone rang in my New York City apartment: it was Luis Rafael Sánchez, from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to also share the great news. I felt a chill, an intense joy, and exclaimed, almost shouting, “Justice has been served!” I felt as if I had received the Nobel Prize! Allow me to explain. Over the years, many scholars and readers of Mario’s work had doubts about whether he would be awarded the coveted prize or not. For my part, I never lost faith. And that is why, upon receiving the information, I immediately called Lima and contacted my friend Juan Ossio, then Peru’s Minister of Culture. He was one of the staunchest among those who did not hesitate to believe that Mario would eventually receive this award. It is an understatement to say that we forgot the years of waiting and over the phone rejoiced at the Swedish Academy’s decision.

The night before the big news arrived, Mario and other colleagues participated in a program at the Americas Society about his intellectual legacy and the impact of his work on contemporary Andean authors. It was a splendid presentation, topped off with an exquisite dinner in a French restaurant where, amid some gossip, great conversation, and even better jokes, the world seemed a literary preserve. No one present suspected that the next day would be a turning point in the biography of Mario Vargas Llosa and in the history of Peruvian and Latin American literature.

Despite the revelry, my own concerns developed later. After several years, The City College of New York and Mario Vargas Llosa had agreed on a date for him to be awarded an honorary doctorate in the renowned Great Hall on November 18. Given the Nobel Prize winner’s many commitments, including preparing his acceptance speech, would he keep the appointment at a public institution very similar to the University of San Marcos, his alma mater? When the time came to review the protocol for the ceremony, Mario had but one request: he explained that after attending many official functions, he wanted to skip the ceremonial dinner and go privately to his favorite Chinese restaurant with his wife Patricia, my husband Eugenio, and myself. I explained the situation to then President Lisa S. Coico, and she graciously understood.

True to his word, on November 18, Vargas Llosa and Patricia arrived punctually at a packed auditorium. I’ll never forget Mario’s thought-provoking speech. Titled “The Return of the Monsters,” it is a plea for the respect of differences, the rejection of prejudices and the mass displacement of residents, in other words, a call for peace and harmony. Its closing anecdote about the happy coexistence of a hippopotamus and a turtle is worth recalling in these tumultuous times: “Is it not a disgrace that two animals belonging to species as distinct as turtle and hippopotamus could coexist, relate to one another, and love one another, whereas stupid human bipeds savagely kill each other as soon as they discover frequently insignificant differences between them?”